This is the last part of the trip. We wanted to do a few more things, but the weather wasn’t cooperating…. Oh well, we lucked out for this whole trip anyways, sooo can’t complain. We spent a day in Cardiff. We got tickets to go see the Olympic quarter-final women’s football game. It was my first football game, so I was pretty stoked about it. We had some time to kill, so our first stop was Cardiff Castle.

HDR picture!

Here’s the view from the top of the castle. You can see Millenium Stadium from here.

Here’s the second part of the castle. The first part was really interesting, but this second part seemed like some rich person bought the area and built some crazy building next to it…. Wait… That really happened? Well then! It was still really cool. Love the details and history!

Here we are, Millennium Stadium! The place seated 70+ thousand people (which is crazy for us Canadians but not for Europeans), but there were only just under 30 thousand that attended (which is crazy for us, but not for them). It was definitely a good time!

Well, it’s sad to have to leave and return to reality, but it has been an amazing three months! Definitely a great time for my first time on that side of the earth. I definitely want go back in the near future.

So here we are… Checking out a little town called Chepstow. It’s right on the border of Wales and England. The main attraction is the Chepstow Castle. It was built around late 1000’s? And later on it was expanded. It’s really crazy to see so much history around here. Everywhere you go, there’s really interesting history behind these things. So Shannon and I did some wandering around before we went to the castle.

Like this:

Scott and Aileen left for Victoria the next day, so Shannon and I were left alone in Dublin to check out the different sites they briefly took us and suggested us to go. It was a really full day – a lot of walking since we didn’t have a car. It was worth it though. We ended up going to the Guinness brewery and the Kilmainham Gaol.

There was a cool market on the street!

More pictures of the really tall spire, downtown.

The next picture is an HDR picture of O’Connell Street, downtown Dublin.

Shannon and I were geocaching around the area, and we found the Dublin Castle. It was really cool!

We found the Guinness Brewery!

Guinness ads!

This is where you can pour your own free pint of Guinness the right way, or you could get your pint up at Sky Bar which is at the very top of the building.

The proper way to pour a pint of Guinness.

Up at Sky Bar! Pretty sweet view.

Then we went downstairs to grab some lunch! Soooo good!

After lunch we walked over to Kilmainham Gaol (pronounced the same as “jail”).

We had a little bit of time to kill before the tour started, so we checked out the museum part first.

And the tour begins!

Shannon trying to hide in a cell.

HDR picture of the cells area.

On the way back home, we got distracted by the Irish Museum of Modern Art… Oops… But at least we didn’t go inside to check it out.

Well, this was definitely a huge post…. Hope you all enjoyed the pics as much as I enjoyed taking them! I’m hoping to get more frequent posts. I just have too many pictures to go through.

Another week goes by. Work has been really hectic as it’s the end of the tax season, so we have to take down the kiosks and stuff… Late nights, early mornings. Good times… Didn’t think I’d have enough time this week to squeeze in a picture, but today Matty P and I went to Hatley Castle to do some shooting. I’ve decided to try out my 50mm lens again because I haven’t taken many HDR pics with this lens, so this would give me a challenge. This is definitely a REALLY different way of shooting. I’m not used to it at all… It’s kind of stressful because I’m used to being able to work with a lot of space with my wide angle lens. So this was tough, but I’m slowly learning. One thing I love about these pics is the detail of the rocks. There’s SO much detail, it’s awesome! I’ve been going to some pretty cool areas, and it’s hard to choose just one picture when there’s so much stuff to shoot! So here’s two pictures. Enjoy!

Like this:

Wow, almost didn’t make it for the HDR project deadline. Cutting it close…

It feels like I’m running out of places to go already! It’s almost getting stressful trying to figure out where I’m going to shoot next because I want all my HDR pictures to be different, and it’s hard to have an eye for it. I think when I start getting more time on my hands, I’ll be able to come up with different places easier. So far I think it’s been a real positive experience for me – forcing myself to bring my camera around and look at things in a different perspective. At first I went up this hill that overlooked Gonzales Bay area. I took a bunch of pictures, but I had a feeling it was going to fail miserably, so I thought to myself I needed a backup place. As I was looking around the area, I saw the roof of Craigdarroch Castle…. So off I go. I took some pictures of the castle at different angles, but for some reason the other ones were a complete failure. I still can’t figure out what would make a good HDR picture. It’s still a hit or miss for me. But I’m learning something new every time – checking out other people’s work, different editing techniques, etc…. I like to think I’m getting better at this every time :)